A hierarchical cross-departmental agent-based approach to explore the impacts of policy interplay on land use dynamics

Understanding the interactions between competing land policies is crucial for identifying governance challenges and assisting urban planners and policy analysts in making informed decisions. However, a methodology for incorporating land use patterns and the policy implementation processes within the framework of hierarchical land management remains underexplored. Here, we employ an agent-based model (ABM) to investigate how land use change occurs as policies intersect across different hierarchical levels and branches of government in Wuhan, China. Changes in land use arise from the interplay between five agents—the central level, the local level that incorporates three departments, and the village collective level—in the decisions on land acquisition, conversion, and reclamation. Four parameters characterize the enforcement levels of relevant policies, and multi-objective optimization with genetic algorithms was applied to calibrate them. The results show that: (1) Our ABM exhibits a figure of merit value of 0.3 at the city level and 0.58 in the larger urban area, indicating its capability to simulate real land use dynamics. (2) Policy implementation gaps led to high land conversion and low farmland reclamation. (3) The dynamic enforcement scenarios provide a viable pathway for negotiated governance, enabling demand-responsive rate attenuation and conflict mitigation, which is distinct from the exacerbated land use conflicts observed under the other scenarios. (4) Policy should incorporate adaptive mechanisms to maintain a buffer between competing land demands rather than binary constraints. This ABM introduces a novel hierarchical framework to decode policy interplay and implementation tensions, advancing sustainable land governance and urban planning insights. • Land use policies on food security, conservation and urban growth can collide. • A hierarchical cross-departmental agent-based approach for policy scenario analysis. • Key parameters represent enforcement of policies calibrated to actual land cover. • Land use dynamics in ABM emerge from land acquisition, conversion, and reclamation. • Dynamic enforcement scenarios enable mitigating land use conflict.